An Iron Rose (2 page)

‘Useful shirt,’ I said.

‘Blacksmith’s wife in England makes them. Got tired of looking at all that burnt skin.’

‘It’s not a good look.’

‘Sure you know what you’re doing here?’ she said. ‘Never heard of anyone doing it.’

‘People did it for hundreds of years.’

‘Well, maybe they didn’t have any choice. You could get a new one. Stick this thing in a museum.’

‘Making things on this when Queen Victoria was a baby,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And it’s outlived its usefulness. Might as well hang on to your old underpants.’

I thought about this for a moment. ‘Wish someone else would hang on to my old underpants,’ I said. ‘While I’m wearing them.’

Allie was pushing coal towards the glowing coke. She looked up, bland. ‘Surprised to hear that position’s vacant,’ she said. ‘Give it a blast. We’ll be here all day.’

I gave the fire a blast. Allie Morris was a qualified farrier and blacksmith, trained in England. For a long time I’d been looking for someone to do the horse work and help in the smithy. Then I saw her advertisement in the Situations Wanted.

‘I’d be in that if the terms were right,’ she’d said on the phone. ‘But I’ve got to tell you, I’m not keen on the business side.’

‘You mean extracting the money?’

‘In particular.’

‘You want to come around on Sunday? Eight-thirty? Or any time. Give me a hand with something. We’ll talk about it.’

I’d explained what I wanted to do.

It took a good while to get the fire right: raking and wetting until we had a good mass of burning coke that could be compacted.

‘What I had in mind,’ I said, ‘you do the horse work, I take the bookings, keep up the stores, send out the bills, and get the buggers to pay.’

‘Last item there,’ said Allie. ‘That’s the important function. That’s where I fall down.’ She shook her head. ‘Horse people.’

‘Tight as Speedos,’ I said.

‘I had to tell this one bloke, I’m coming around with two big men and we’re going to fit him with racing shoes, run him over the jumps. And he still took another week to pay up.’

‘I’ll need your help with some general work too,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I can’t cope. And I’m not all that flash on the finer stuff.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Allie, banking coal around the coke. ‘Got to get even heat for a job like this. Get the heat to bounce off the coal, eat the oxygen. Reducing fire, know the term?’

‘Use it all the time,’ I said.

Lew and the dog came in to watch. The dog went straight to his spot on a pile of old potato sacks in a corner, well away from sparks and flying bits of clinker.

Finally, Allie said, ‘All right, let’s do it.’ She was flushed from the heat. It was an attractive sight.

I had a sliding block and tackle rigged from the steel beam in the roof and a chain around the battered anvil’s waist. Lew and I pulled it up, an unwieldy 285 pounds of metal. You could tell the weight from the numbers stamped on the waist: two-two-five, standing for two hundredweights, or 224 pounds; two quarters of a hundredweight, fifty-six pounds; and five pounds. To get it under the smoke hood and onto the coke bed, Allie slid it slowly down a sheet of steel plate.

When it was in place, I unshackled the chain.

‘Got any tea?’ Allie said. ‘This’ll take a while.’

‘I’ll make it,’ said Lew. He looked glad of something to do.

It took about an hour in the intense heat to get the face of the anvil to the right colour. We put on gloves and I got the chain around its waist, pulled it to the lip of the forge and Lew and Allie hoisted it. The day was dark outside and we had no lights on in the smithy. But when the anvil came out and hung in the air, turning gently, the room filled with its glowing orange light and we stood in awe for a moment, three priests with golden faces.

Carefully, we set the dangerous object down on the block of triple-reinforced concrete I used for big heavy jobs.

‘Well,’ said Allie, ‘the thing will probably break in half. Put your helmet on.’

I handed her a six-pound flatter and a two-pound hammer and we went to work, hammering, dressing the face and edges of the anvil, trying to get the working surface back to something like its original flatness.

‘Lew’s grandfather found this anvil,’ I said. ‘In the old stables at Kinross Hall. Bought it off them for twenty dollars. Gave it to my old man.’

Allie Morris had just left when they arrived, two men in plainclothes in a silver Holden. I heard the car outside and met them at the smithy door. The dog came out with me. His upper lip twitched.

‘Lie down,’ I said. He turned his head and looked at me, lay down. But his eyes were on the men.

‘MacArthur John Faraday?’ the cop in front said.

I nodded.

‘Police,’ he said. They both did a casual flash of ID.

I put out my hand. ‘Look at those.’

They glanced at each other, eyes talking, handed over the wallets. The man who’d spoken was Detective Sergeant Michael Bernard Shea. His offsider was Detective Constable Allan Vernon Cotter. Shea was in his forties, large and going to flab, ginger hair, faded freckles, big ears. He had the bleak look men get on assembly lines. Cotter was dark, under thirty, neck muscled like a bull terrier’s, eyes too close, hair cropped to a five-o’clock shadow. Chewing gum.

I gave them the wallets back.

‘Lewis Lowey here?’ Shea said.

‘Yes.’

‘Like a word with you first, then him. Somewhere we can sit down?’

‘What kind of word? We’ve given statements.’

Shea held up a big hand. ‘Informal. Get some background.’

I put my head back in the door. ‘Police,’ I said. ‘Don’t go anywhere, Lew.’

I took them over to the shed that served as the business’s office. It held a table, three kitchen chairs, and a filing cabinet bought at a clearing sale. I sat down behind the table. Cotter spun a chair around and sat down like a cowboy.

Shea perched on the filing cabinet behind Cotter. He looked around the room, distaste on his face, sniffing the musty air like someone who suspects a gas leak. ‘So you been here, what, five years?’ he said.

‘Something like that,’ I said.

‘And you know this bloke?’

‘A long time.’

‘First on the scene.’

‘Second.’

‘You and the kid. First and second.’

I didn’t say anything. Silence for a while. Shea coughed, a dry little cough.

‘You, ah, friendly with the kid?’ This from the offsider, Cotter. He was staring at me, black eyes gleaming like sucked grapes. His ears were pierced, but he wasn’t wearing an earring. He smiled and winked.

I said to Shea, ‘Detective Constable Cotter just winked at me. What does that mean?’

‘I’ll do this, Detective Cotter,’ Shea said. ‘So Lewis rang you at…?’

‘Two forty-five. It’s in the statement.’

‘Yeah. He says you got there about two fifty-five. Looking at his watch all the time.’

‘About right.’

‘Clarify this for me,’ Shea said. ‘It’s twenty kilometres from here. You get dressed and drive it in ten minutes. Give or take a minute.’

‘It’s fifteen the short way,’ I said. ‘I didn’t get dressed. I was dressed. I fell asleep dressed. And I didn’t obey the speed limit.’

Shea rubbed the corner of his right eye with a finger like a hairy ginger banana. ‘Old bloke worth a bit?’

‘Look like it?’

‘Can’t tell sometimes. Keep it under the mattress. That his property?’

I nodded.

‘Who stands to benefit then?’

‘There’s just Lew, his grandson.’

‘Then there’s you.’

‘I’m not family.’

‘How come you inherit?’

I said, ‘I’m not with you.’

‘We found his will,’ Shea said. ‘You get a share.’

I shrugged. This was news to me. ‘I don’t know about that.’

Cotter said, ‘Got any gumboots?’ Pause. ‘Mr Faraday.’

I looked at him. ‘Dogs got bums? Try the back porch.’

Cotter got up and left.

‘We’ll have to take them away,’ Shea said.

I got up and went to the window. Cotter had the Land Rover passenger door open and was poking through the mess inside.

‘Your man got a warrant?’ I said.

‘Coming to that,’ Shea said. He took a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. ‘Here’s your copy.’

‘Got something in mind?’ I said.

It was Shea’s turn to say nothing, just look at me, not very interested.

I heard the sound of a vehicle, then another car nosed around the corner of the house. Two men and a woman.

‘The gang’s all here,’ I said. ‘Go for your life.’

Shea coughed. ‘I’m going to ask you to come into town for an interview. When we’re finished here. The young fella too. Don’t want you to talk to him before. Okay? So you can’t travel with him. He can come with me or you can make some other arrangement, get a friend. You’re entitled to be represented. Kid’s gotta have someone with him. You don’t want to come of your own accord, well, we do it the other way. Believe me.’

There wasn’t a way around this. ‘Let me explain this to Lew,’ I said.

Shea nodded. We went over to the smithy. Lew was where I’d left him, puzzled and frightened. I sat down next to him.

‘Lew,’ I said, ‘listen, mate. They’re going to search the place. Then they want us to go into town so they can ask us some more questions. They’ll record everything. You’ll have a lawyer with you, just so everything’s done right. All right?’

‘We told them,’ Lew said.

‘I know. It’s just the way they do it. I’ll tell you about it later. I’m going to arrange for your lawyer now. We can’t talk to each other again before the interviews. I’ll be there when you finish.’

He looked at me, looked away, just a child again in a world suddenly turned from stone to water. He was on the edge of tears. I gave him a little punch in the arm. ‘Mate, this’ll be over in next to no time. Then we can have a feed, get some sleep. Hold on. Right?’

He moved his head, more tremble than a nod. He was exhausted.

I rang the lawyer who’d handled my father’s estate. ‘You’re better off with someone who specialises in crim,’ he said. ‘What’s your number?’

I waited by the phone. A tall cop came in, opened the Ned Kelly stove and poked around in the ashes. When he’d finished, he started on the chest of drawers, working from bottom to top like a burglar.

The phone rang.

‘Mr Faraday?’

I said yes.

‘I’m Laura Randall.’ Deep voice. ‘Mike Sherman said you had a matter.’

I told her what was happening.

She said nothing until I’d finished. Then she said, ‘Ring me just before you leave. I’ll meet you there.’

The search took nearly two hours: house, smithy, all the outbuildings. When they’d finished, the five of them had a conference outside. Shea came into the office and said, no expression, ‘Firearm on the premises.’

I nodded.

‘.38 Colt Python.’

I nodded again.

‘Licence?’

‘No.’

‘Unlicensed firearm?’

I savoured the moment. ‘Special permit.’

‘Special permit. That’s for what reason?’

I said, ‘See if they’ll tell you, Detective Sergeant.’

He didn’t like this. ‘I will. I will.’

When they’d bagged the gun we set off for town, Shea and Cotter in front with Lewis, then me in the Land Rover, then the other car. It began to rain as we crested the last hump of the Great Dividing Range, all sixty metres of it.

I parked behind Shea and Cotter in front of the police station, an old two-storey redbrick building with an ugly new annexe. The other cops drove through an entrance marked of f icial par king onl y.

As I got out, the door of a BMW on the other side of the narrow street opened and a tall woman with dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail got out. She took a leather briefcase out of the back seat and came over.

‘Mr Faraday?’ she said. ‘Laura Randall.’ Her breath was steam in the cold afternoon. She was in her thirties, thin, plain, pale skin, faintly amused twist to her mouth. The clothes were expensive: brown leather bomber jacket, dark tartan trousers over gleaming boots.

We shook hands. Shea, Cotter and Lew were out of the car, standing on the pavement. Cotter had his hands in his pockets and a cigarette in his mouth. He looked like a bouncer on his break.

I moved around so that I had my back to them. ‘That’s your client,’ I said. ‘The young fella. He told them the story this morning. He doesn’t know anything. The fat one over there, Shea, he’s hinting he thinks the kid and I might be in it, killed Ned for the inheritance. Maybe more than just friends, too.’

She looked me hard in the eyes. ‘Sexually involved?’ she said. ‘Are you?’

‘Only with the opposite sex,’ I said. ‘And that infrequently.’ She didn’t smile.